Child of Narnia
by Medusa Sterling
Summary: After their second return from Narnia a terrible sickness befalls Susan. No doctor can help her, they can't even figure out what she's suffering from. The only hope for Susan is Narnia. But will she get better once she is cured? Or will the loss of Narnia destroy her in the end? Just something I came up with over the time, slight Suspian, a little dark at times hence the raiting.
1. Chapter 1 - Ill

**Just a little One-Shot that came to my mind when I read the first Narnia book by C.S. Lewis, though it's movie-verse...**

**Ill**

It happened slowly, creeping. At first, she was feeling unwell. It was just some weird tiredness like you have on a cold winter morning when you can't find the energy to leave bed. Then she lost color. Her family and teachers explained it with the lack of sun. But then she started to lose weight. She wasn't eating any less than before but still her weight reduced more and more. That was when they started worrying.  
Susan had stopped laughing a long time ago. In fact, the last time she laughed was before their return from Narnia. Now she did little less than sitting in her room and staring out of the window. Sometimes she drew, but nothing more. Soon the girl was unable to keep down any food and only laid in bed because she was to weak to do anything more. Her siblings were desperate. No doctor could help her, they couldn't even name what she was suffering of for heaven's sake! And so Susan laid in her bed in a state between sleeping and waking unable to talk or draw and her state only worsened now that she was cut of from her only source of peace.

When the Pevensie siblings had returned from Narnia, Susan had spend days sitting in the garden drawing. Her drawings usually featured Narnians, nature or buildings but she had made three drawings that were even more precious than those others. One was a drawing of a young man on a dark horse and it was one her family was alowed to see, the second was a lion's head, expertly drawn were both the mane and face, this one she gave Lucy, a picture of her beloved Aslan. The third and last was the portrait of the same handsome stranger that was also in the first picture.

She had it always with her. It was her sole consolation. Lucy tried to cheer her up, sitting at her elder sister's bed and telling her stories of Narnia. Peter and Edmund tried to find anyone who knew how to help her. But in vain. Lucy even tried to contact Narnia in hopes of finding a cure. But she couldn't make contact at all. And so they all suffered with her because they couldn't do anything else. Then Aunt Polly came to visit.

She looked at Susan and recognition displayed at her face. Later that evening she took Peter aside. "Peter", the aunt said, "I have seen something like that once. When I was a little girl, a boy, Digory, lived in the house next door. His mother had a similar desease as Susan, though Susan's is far graver. "What happened to her?" Peter asked her. "Did she..." he didn't finish his sentence. "No. She made a full recovery. The man Digory and his mother lived with, was it his uncle? I can't remember... Well, this man played with things he didn't understand, in the end he made Digory release an evil sorceress and Digory and me brought the two of them accidentaly to a newborn world. In fact, we were there when it was born out of a lion's song. To make up for his fault, Digory was sent on a task by this lion to bring him a golden apple from a garden far away. I accompanied him and in the end, from the apple grew a tree. A tree that for the following centuries meant protection to this newborn world. To Narnia. Because the lion had a great heart he picked an apple from the tree and gave it to Digory. After our return home, Digory fed his mother the magical apple and she recovered from her terrible deseas even though no doctor had been able to help her." Polly ended her explanations. "Then we need to get Susan such an apple" Peter exclaimed. Polly sighed. "If it only was that easy, my dear boy. But no one knows where to find those apples apart from the lion who gave Digory one." "When you say _lion_ you mean..." "Aslan, yes. And the evil sorceress was Jadis, the white witch. But the point is, the only possibility is Narnia. If we could only get there."

Lucy woke up from a whisper. It was nothing strange for her to wake up by something like that. Unafraid the girl followed the whispers to the garden Where she found that the tree, that grew there, had formed a hole and through that hole Lucy saw Aslan. "Aslan" she cheered. "Hello Lucy" the lion said with the same fondness as always. "Aslan, please, Susan needs your help, she's terribly ill, and we can't figure out what's wrong with her" the girl pleaded. "Shh shh" the lion soothed. "I know, and I know what will help her. Unfortunately the procurement of said cure will take time, time your sister does not have. Just like Digory's mother all those years ago, it was grief that brought her to this state. If we can lessen the grief we can buy her some time. Hopefully that will be enough to get the cure." Aslan explained. "But how do we do that?" Lucy asked the lion. "Bring her here, to this tree every day, and through the hole in it she will be able to see and talk to the only one who can lessen her grief. That should buy us time." Lucy nodded and Aslan said: "Now go back to sleep, little one."

The next day, Susan was moved to the garden, so she could sit by the treehole. There she saw not Aslan, as Lucy did the previous night, but Caspian. The young king talked to the girl for hours and you could virtually see how Susan's health got better and better. Still she was weak but at least the girl could ingest light fare. Her siblings could even hear her laugh again. But once it was time to return her to her room for the night, her fragile health broke down again and was even worse than before. "Hurry up Aslan" Lucy prayed silently.

The days passed and Susan's health got better and better over day and worse and worse over night. Soon she could talk and draw when she sat at the tree and saw Caspian but was terribly weak and unable to keep down what she had ingested over day in the nights. "Seeing him and losing him day after day is killing her" Edmund summed it up one day. The siblings could only nod. They all saw how Caspian was good for Susan and how being seperated from him worsened her fragile state. "Can't we do anything?" Lucy asked desperately. "I'm afraid not. Aslan said Susan and me could never go back to Narnia." Peter apologized. With tears in her eyes Lucy watched her sister laugh in the garden. soon the sun would set and the laughter would be gone for another nine hours of pain and fear it would be the last.

One day, Aslan finally woke Lucy up in the middle of the night again and gave her an apple. "Give this to you sister" the lion told her, "and when she eats of it, she'll recover." And that she did. But the treehole and with it Susan's only connection to Narnia was gone when they woke up the next morning.


	2. Chapter 2 - Imagination

**This follows some weeks after ****_Ill _****and came to my mind when I thought about Narnia. Though I find it rather saddening it could be an explanation to why the Pevensies always return to England in the end and why Peter and Susan where told they could never return (which is exactly why The Chronicles of Narnia consists only of ****_The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe _****and ****_Prince Caspian_**** to me in both books and movies, though I ****_did_**** read ****_The Magician's Nephew_**** which also refutes my theory thankfully - and ****_NO_**** I do not really care if everyone apart from Susan returns in the end! Blame the Caspian-movie, but I really love their love story too much)**

**Imagination**

Weeks had passed since Susan's recovery but although the girl was totally healthy she was not _happy_. One day Peter asked her about it.  
"Guess why, it's really not that hard. You can try three times, but you won't need more than one." His sister replied sarcastically. "Narnia", was the eldest Pevensies' answer. "We have a winner" Susan cheered cynically. "Though it's not _perfectly_ correct. It's not _Narnia_, it's more the lack of it." The brunette told her fair haired brother. "I miss it. And _him_." "But maybe we can return too next time Narnia calls. You also saw it through the treehole." Peter tried to cheer his sister up. But she only shook her head.

"Even if we could, what good would it do? Time passes different in Narnia. The first time we were there, we lived in Narnia for years, yet when we returned mere minutes had passed. And then when we were back in England for one year, in Narnia it were centuries. So even if we returned this very minute, he would be dead by now. Either that or he would be a man older than our grandfather." "But only weeks ago you saw him as a young man!" Peter argued. Susan laughed bitterly. "And who tells you that it wasn't just some of Aslan's magic? Just a trick to make me feel better? Because that's what Narnia is. A trick of mind to make us feel better." "How can you say that?" Her brother didn't understand. "How can you say that Narnia..." She cut him off.

"How can I say that? Have you ever thought about it, Peter? Because I did. Nothing else has been on my mind since our return. Only Narnia and that to me it is forever lost. But I figured out why. I figured it all out. Narnia doesn't exist, Peter. It's only an imaginational land we created to cope with the dramatic events around us." "What are you talking about Susan? Of course Narnia is real!" He still couldn't believe what his sister told him. "Is it? Because I remember how helpless and powerless we felt when we were send to the old man during war.

And then we discovered Narnia, a land where it was us who were destined to save the people and the country from an evil sorceress. In Narnia we were not helpless children, but strong and powerful leaders, royalty, role models. The kind of people we were lacking in the real world. We lived many years in Narnia, grew older, were happy, yet we returned by an incident that could hardly be coincidence and only minutes had passed. A year later, when the war was over and we had to return to school, that was a new situation for us and we returned to Narnia, where we fought against an evil king and government. We were respected and strong, faced the unknown, embraced the new but still kept the old ways. Which is exactly what our situation and problem in the real world was like and how we could solve it. Aslan told us we could never come back because Narnia had taught us everything it could. What he really meant was, that we had grown out of hiding in an imaginary land whenever we're faced with a problem and that we can never imagine being there ever again, not that much at least."

"Still..." Susan sighed. "If Narnia would be real, shouldn't we still know what we learned there? In Narnia I'm a master archer, here I can barely shoot a wall that's 15 feet away. I should be able to ride the wildest stallions and should dance with a grace like no other girl. Yet I can barely get a gentle Pony to do what I want and am unable to dance a waltz without stepping on my partner's toes. Nothing I could do in Narnia has any effect on my abilitys here! Because it was all just in our minds!"

"But your disease..." It was a last desperate attempt. "...was hardly a disease. It was only an imagination. That's why the doctors couldn't find anything, because there _was_ nothing to be found. I couldn't cope with life without Narnia so I got '_sick_'. I showed the symptomes but was never truly ill. And when Lucy gave me an apple '_from Narnia_' it was that bit of imagination that '_healed_' me. Just like the imagination of talking to a beloved person through a tree." "But the treehole..." "Which treehole? It was gone the very morning I was healthy again." "But..." Peter tried again, but his sister didn't let him. "It was an **_apple tree_**, Peter." She said. Now he was silent, lacking any further arguments. Susan finally turned around and faced her elder brother. "Get used to live without Narnia, Peter" She said coldly. "'Cause it's never been real." And with those words she left.

She stood on a cliff and screamed. She really was unique. Noone else would manage to fall in love in an imaginary land and then shut himself out of said land. Could you believe such stupidity? It was almost as if she didn't _**want **_to be happy! And then that _illness_. More like a _sham disease_. Phantom symptons. Crying she fell to the ground. Even if it had only been an imagination, she missed Narnia. She missed it's meadows and it's woods. The rivers and the castles, the peace and freedom she only found there... And that was now all lost to her. And she didn't even had someone to blame, apart from herself maybe. That was when Susan Pevensie succumbed to selfloathing and despair.


	3. Chapter 3 - Way Out

**Sets place little after ****_Imagination_****, it's an end to my Chronicles of Narnia mini-ff and rather dark, but with a spark of hope...**

**Way Out**

She didn't know how long she had said there, crying her heart out for some imagination of hers, when she suddenly heard a whisper. She looked up. "Susan" There he was, standing just a step behind the edge of the cliff, his hand outstretched, calling for her. Was it possible it wasn't only an imagination? Was it maybe in fact real? Without really thinking it through, Susan stood up and moved towards the edge and the hovering figure of the man she loved. She couldn't care less for the approaching storm or the sharp-edged rocks at the cliff's foot. It simply didn't matte to her, wether she was in this world or not, wether she lived or died. Stollid she moved towards the edge and was just about to step off it when something grabbed her by the collar and pulled her back.

"What do you think you're doing girl?" A voice Susan knew all to well asked. Astonished she turned to see the one who had held her back. With his maw grabbed her collar and dragged her back to safety had a lion. And not any lion, no but Aslan himself, the creator of Narnia. "I was called." She simply answered, to happy to see someone from Narnia again. "And you thought, if you followed that call, you could return to Narnia." She nodded, still looking at the lion with amazement. Aslan smiled at her benevolently. "Maybe I was a little rash with saying you would never return to Narnia. Maybe Narnia doesn't need you anymore, but you still need Narnia, even though you can't learn anything more." Susan looked at Aslan questioning. "Does that mean I can stay?" she uttered hesitantly. Aslan nodded his big head. "Yes. I can now see, that you are a child of Narnia in your heart, and that you have always belonged here, more than in the world you were born into." He looked at her affectionately, the way a grandfather looked at his grandchild. "Now come. I know of someone who eagerly awaits you." And with a genuine smile Susan followed the lion.

They had looked for her everywhere when they finally found the cliff. Immediately the Pevensies knew that she had been here. Tha grass was still pressed where she had passed hours crying to herself. "Do you feel it too?" It had been Lucy who had asked that. Of course it had been. Of all the siblings she had always been the most sensitive to the magic. "Narnia." They all agreed. Susan's body was never found. It was asumed the waves had carried it away. The coffin at the funeral had been empty, only symbolic. Of course Peter, Edmund and Lucy knew it better. They knew there had been no body for the waves to wash away. Maybe her sister was dead in this world, she lived on in Narnia.

Because from the moment she was born Susan had looked for a way to flee this world she did never really fit in.  
And then she had found Narnia.  
Her way out.


End file.
